


Flinch

by capsshuri



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Background Sam!Cap, F/M, I don't know what to tag oof, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Canon Compliant, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character, written when we all thought steve and tony would die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 20:04:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14678472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capsshuri/pseuds/capsshuri
Summary: The other people on her team don’t flinch when he comes near; the other people on her team haven’t had to sift through the countless atrocities The Soldier has committed.





	Flinch

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while before Infinity War came out, when we all thought that Steve and Tony were going to die so none of that has been retconned and so its not canon compliant. oops!

She’s not scared of Bucky, it’s  _ him,  _ The Soldier. 

 

Shuri’s seen Barnes’ memories; she’s seen  _ him  _ and so it’s understandable that when Bucky comes close, sometimes she’ll flinch. She apologises, tries to tell him it’s not him but the words get stuck in her throat. 

 

_ (Because it wasn’t him but it was those hands, hands that could snap her in two; that face was the last that many saw, Shuri has mused that it is a nice last face to see.) _

 

He only nods, looks at her with an understanding yet frowns in something akin to hurt anyway.

 

She’s seen the things that Hydra made him do so it’s hard sometimes, to joke and jest. And she’s removed the triggers but The Soldier is still there and his memories always will be.

 

The other people on her team don’t flinch when he comes near; the other people on her team haven’t had to sift through the countless atrocities The Soldier has committed.

 

Shuri thinks that Bucky knows she doesn’t hate him, that she isn’t terrified of him but she also knows that it’s probably hard to tell sometimes. 

 

It gets easier once she’s sure that The Soldier isn’t coming back. She’s not scared anymore that he’ll strangle her if she says the wrong thing; that he’ll beat someone to a pulp because they got into a shouting match. 

 

The Dora ease up as well. 

 

She doesn’t like when they’re in her lab, as much as Shuri loves them they crowd her far too much; she was quite understanding why they had to be so close while she was working with Bucky. Once they’re  _ all _ sure that he won’t snap, they retreat from her lab floor.

 

Bucky and her spend a lot of time together now. Bucky needs a friend and neither The Captain nor The Falcon is in Wakanda anymore, so she steps in.

 

He talks about Brooklyn and she talks about Birnin Zana; questions and words and much more, flow freely between them. 

 

He talks about Steve in a way that tells her everything and yet nothing at the same time; he talks about Sam more freely but something in his voice stays tight. 

 

_ (He says nothing about Hydra and his time with them.) _

 

She talks about T’Challa and how proud of him she is; she talks about Fezeka and how much she misses the girl's laughter, muses on if they’ll stay friends once she’s finished her Dora training. 

 

_ (She doesn’t say a word about Baba; doesn’t mention that she still has nightmares about Erik.) _

 

It’s not until she’s back in her room does she realise she hadn’t flinched once.

 

Shuri thinks, at first, she had been a poor substitute for Steve and him for Fezeka but over time it changed. 

 

They became each other confidants; he’s the only one that knows about her nightmares, she’s seen inside of his mind. It changes their relationship. Not in a bad way or a good way. It just changes.

 

It’s been months since being around Bucky made Shuri flinch, she’s gotten used to his presence and talking to him has helped her separate Bucky from The Winter Soldier.

 

He says something one day while they’re on a hike— they hike together now, it helps them both decompress. It’s along the lines of ‘your brother will probably stick his claws in my chest if he finds out I’ve helped sneak you away from the Dora’ and Shuri doesn’t really know what happened.

 

She’s had panic attacks before but she’s never straight up burst into tears. She doesn’t know what to do to stop the continuous stream of them from pouring out of her eyes and neither does Bucky. 

 

It just sounds so much like what N’Jadaka had spat at them all in the throne room that Shuri doesn’t even register the fact that it’s being said playfully. A Brooklyn accent mixed with a chuckle in the voice sounds nothing like Erik’s sneer-laced West-coast drawl, and yet Shuri is still crying.

 

He lays a hand on her arm but she flinches. The first time in almost a year and it wasn’t because of The Soldier.

 

She moves away from him, sits on the grass with her head in her hands. After a while her eyes dry but her head stays on her knees, her arms wrapped around it. 

 

She’d thrown herself into her work, didn’t give herself time to sort through her own thoughts as she went through Bucky’s.

 

_ Wakandan’s aren’t known to be emotionally constipated but Shuri always liked breaking tradition.  _

 

She mutters that to Bucky. He’s still standing where she left him and Shuri knows he’s got that stupid look on his face. The concerned one that looks far more confused.

 

He sits next to her and she tells him about her uncle, and her cousin, and both of their deaths in full, not in the condensed way she’s spoken about them for months.

 

He listens, sometimes asks questions.

 

(They don’t return to the palace until the sun has set.)

 

Bucky isn’t back to perfect by the time The Avengers come to fight Thanos but he’s better. And Shuri takes pride in it because she did that.

 

(And she’s better too.)

 

She sees him shortly after Steve dies and, apparently, they take turns showing vulnerability because his stern face dissolves into tears as soon as he sees her.

 

She doesn’t really know what to do. When her Baba died she locked herself in her lab for half a week and she doesn’t think Bucky would like that. 

 

She settles on just sitting with him, listening to him. The same as he did for her, except this time they’re sitting against a wall in her lab and fine, maybe she did lock them in there but it’s not the same way that she did with Baba.

 

He leaves with Sam the next day. 

 

(There’s a note. It’s short and abrupt and Shuri gets it, she does, but she can’t help but feel the same way she assumes Bucky had when she flinched.)

 

They see each other very little over the next few years. He’s an Avenger now and, although he sometimes takes up the shield, Sam has the official moniker of Captain America.

 

When they do see each other they say little more than hello, they’re busy people.

 

T’Challa sees him far more than her and she’s sure that her brother has invited him to come back to Wakanda many a time, Shuri’s also sure that Bucky’s excuse is a lame one each and every time.

 

(Shuri doesn’t say anything about it the next time she sees him though, only smiles. She hasn’t invited him back to Wakanda since he left and he hasn’t asked to return either.)

 

Shuri takes the mantle of Black Panther from T’Challa at twenty-three. He smiles as he yields, Shuri thinks he’s always preferred the throne to the claws anyway.

 

So she becomes the protector of Wakanda and T’Challa stays king.

 

The Avengers — bar Sam because he and Shuri talk to each other quite frequently — are all mildly surprised when she arrives in the black panther necklace with T’Challa nowhere to be seen.

 

She smirks at them all and announces with a flourish that she’ll be taking her brother’s place. Most of them give her congratulations and grin back at her; Bucky smiles blankly at a spot above her shoulder.

 

(Shuri knows that the rest of The Avengers can pick up on the awkwardness between them but she also knows that the only one that actually gets it, probably even more than herself, is Sam.)

 

Shuri doesn’t know why Bucky started to avoid her but she was nineteen and petty so she returned the favour. She’s almost twenty-four now, though and they still haven’t had a full conversation since Thanos.

 

She thinks he should be the bigger person. He’s 100 years old with change, so he’s most certainly the  _ older  _ person, Shuri wonders if he’s making up for lost time by being as childish as possible.

 

She corners him after a meeting; he and Sam always leave the conference room last, so she stays seated, catching Sam’s eye and trying to tell him to get out. He must get the idea because he mutters a goodbye to the both of them and then, presumably, locks the door behind him.

 

Bucky frowns at her and stays standing near the door for a long while — her mother is Ramonda so she knows a thing or two about staring somebody down — before rolling his eyes and sitting across from her. 

 

He shrugs his shoulders in question like a petulant child and Shuri merely raises a brow — and her brother is T’Challa, so she’s practically perfected his unamused brow raise.

 

He says nothing for a while longer — and, Bast, Shuri should have expected  _ that _ because he used to not speak for months on end — until Shuri can’t stand the silence anymore and asks why he stopped talking to her; stopped visiting Wakanda. 

 

_ (Stopped visiting  _ _ her _ is left unsaid.)

 

He looks up suddenly, an incredulous look on his face. He shakes his head and mutters, “Thought you were a genius.”

 

Shuri scowls at him, “Fuck you. Answer my question.”

 

Bucky looks at a spot over her shoulder like he’s done countless times before, “Because Steve was dead, and Sam was leaving, and you were a fucking  _ princess.” _

 

Shuri doesn’t know what to say.  _ What does that mean?  _ She wants to scream.  _ I’ve always been a princess  _ is another top pick.  _ Fuck you, I am a genius but I’m so Bast-damned confused. Fuck you! _

 

‘You could have stayed’ is what she says instead.

 

Bucky only shakes his head.

 

“You could have stayed.” She says again, louder this time; firmer.

 

“And what?” Bucky snaps, finally looking in her eyes-  _ and Bast, fuck him for having such pretty eyes,  _ “I stayed as your pet project? Nah. You were my friend, Shuri, and I cared about you but we both knew that beauty and the beast routine wasn’t going to last.”

 

(She flinches. It’s small but it’s there. It happened. She knows that he saw it, yet she’ll ignore it with all her might.)

 

She wasn’t formally in on this ‘beauty and the beast’ bullshit, still, she sure as hell knows what he means. But Bast, she’ll be damned if he gets the last word in.

 

And yet, he’s left her grasping for words again so all she can say is, “Past-tense, huh?” 

 

(Because if there’s anything Shuri knows about Bucky, it’s that he picks the tense in which he speaks in carefully — after so long of not knowing dates and when things happened he started to keep a very close eye on things like that.)

 

He watches her for a moment before wetting his lips and shrugging with a humourless smile, ‘Yeah. Past-tense.’ 

 

The words are said clearly, with a practised blankness that Shuri can only recognise because she does the same; with a subtle bitterness in them that Shuri can only recognise because, even after all these years, she  _ knows  _ him.

 

They stare at each other with identical gazes. Sadness, longing, ( _ maybe, Bast-damn love _ ,) and a little resentment. 

 

Bucky leaves first, without saying goodbye, after scrawling down a note and dropping it in his place. Shuri laughs bitterly at that; at the depressing parallel.

 

She doesn’t read it until she’s back in the room she stays in at the compound — she hesitates to call it  _ her  _ room because she doesn’t want to get attached to this place (though she thinks Wanda’s easy grins and Sam’s side hugs, that both seem to be  _ just  _ for her, means she already has).

 

One side of the note has eight words, scratched down in careful handwriting.

 

( _ I’m sorry but you knew it wouldn’t work.) _

 

The other side is in Bucky’s normal chicken-scratch and has a p.s., it’s short and abrupt and just like before and,  _ bast,  _ Shuri hates him. She really does (she hates even more that that’s not even remotely true).

 

( _ P.S. it doesn’t mean I didn’t love you) _

 

Shuri almost cries because one of the few things she could discern from Bucky’s gaze is that, no matter what he says, he still does.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something about Shuri not being so quick to be okay with Bucky bc I just felt like that wasn't being portrayed. EVen though I know its basically canon that she was alright with him I think it could be a little interesting to see that it was a little hard for her. I imagine that a lot of those memories were absolutely horrific and I think Shuri would definitely try to help Bucky but I feel like her seeing that shit could've been really fucked tbh. 
> 
> also sorry Shuri swears so much but like lbr shuri curses like a sailor. the first time bucky is in shuri's lab like fully coherent, he watches her work and when she starts to swear and hes like that blinking white guy gif jfhkjasfhkja


End file.
